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March 10, 2007
A Little A and the Scribe that Couldn't Add
Simon Holloway over at דבר אכד is working on Ugaritic text KTU 4.173. This is an administrative text of some kind, perhaps something like a payroll or head count by function. You can check out the whole text at Simon's place. This little text is nothing more than a short list with each line having one or more military designations all in the plural with numbers before them and then two lines at the end that appear to indicate a total. There are quite a few tablets more or less like it. One of the problems, as Simon points out, is that the numbers add up to more than the total. The last two lines (10 and 11) read something like "162 heavy (shekels) total." But when Simon adds up the individual entries, he gets 173 and I get 193. How does one explain these differences? First, my guess is, and it is only a guess, that Simon reads 4 at the beginning line 8 where I read 24. But in any case, Simon and I get a different total than what appears in line 10. And that is the real problem.
Let's start by looking at another strange thing in this text: the syllabic "A" under the word trtnm in line 4. Here is what the word looks like in Virolleaud's, 57, autograph.
Notice that the small syllabic "A" is under the last wedge of the alphabetic "r." Syllabic signs also occur in other primarily alphabetic texts. But, as far as I know, they otherwise only occur in student practice texts like KTU 5.15 or in alphabetic texts that have Akkadian captions on one edge like KTU 4.340. The Akkadian syllabic sign in our text is certainly not part of a caption. So, how about a practice text? Or, could the syllabic "A" in our text be some kind of phonetic determinative? If so, I think it unique. Virolleaud, 57, notes that KTU 1.14:50 (Keret 213) has a small alphabetic "a" under the "r" in šrna but this word, as written, is very likely a scribal error for šrnn. In fact, there are quite a large number of such errors in KTU 1.14. Is KTU 1.14, in the form we have it, a scribal exercise? I'm not completely sure one way or the other.
Let's look a little closer at the word trtnm. This is likely a military title in the plural. This word appears in six administrative texts, KTU 4.137:3, 4.163:11, 4.174:7, 4.179:5, 4.216:7 and our text. Except for our text, none of these texts has any unusual orthography.
All of these texts have a certain commonality with our text but KTU 4.179 has many points of contact. One difference is that the numbers come after the titles rather than before them. The total at the bottom (lines 15-17) reads "Total youth(?), 142 heavy (shekels)." And this is the actual count if one assumes that words without numbers after them are in the dual. So the scribe of KTU 4.179 got it right.
Assuming I am correct that the difference between the total at the end of KTU 4.173 and the sum of the actual numbers that goes into it is 31, what is the source of such a difference? I tried several options. The best fit is to not count lines 1 (7 + 7) and 6 (10 + 7). These lines are unique in that they have two military groups per line rather than a single group as seen in all the other lines. But why would they be omitted? KTU 4.179 also has lines with more than one entry and these all work into the total.
I'm really not sure, but despite the rather clean writing style, I think KTU 4.179 may be an exercise tablet. Some students had better stylusmanship than others did. An exercise might account for the seeming mathematical error in the total and perhaps the small syllabic A. But then again, administrative texts in particular often rely on various short cuts and abbreviated expressions that make them hard to understand.
Reference:
Posted by Duane Smith at March 10, 2007 7:07 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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Comments
I do not have time just now to work on this, so I give you a couple of old and recent thoughts. When you have "youths" in many cases , as you know, it means, "soldiers." Also the "bn" before a military term as Gordon says can mean a "member" of that unit. Now a new thought. In the Egyptian Story of the Fated Prince, the prince (his father is a king) describes himself to his new friends as "the son of a chariot-warrior." He is a royal son, but he just may be making a claim of belonging to a "crack outfit." And in the Nuzi area this would be a great thing (he went to Naharin). The Hurrians knew their horses.
Posted by: Loren Fisher at March 11, 2007 10:34 AM
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